Moreover, a large proportion of the Russian workforce may be too drunk to function. Almost one male death in three is alcohol-related. “The increase of alcohol consumption from 10 to 15 liters and an almost simultaneous increase in mortality suggests the central role played by alcohol to mortality, in average up to 426,000 per year in 1980-2001. Alcohol-related deaths total 29.6 percent of total mortality for men and 17.0 percent for women,” the report says.

Tyler Cowen has a short write-up here. He made two of my favorite movies of all time in The Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal, both Symphonies in black and white. All very gloomy and subtitled, but magnificently done. His passing leaves the world without one of the best visual storytellers of all time.

I finally saw the V for Vendetta movie and found it soils my memory of the comic. Gone was the grit of Evie, the violent mystery of V, the looming menace of the state. Replacing it was corporate angst, an ocean of improbabilities, and a third rate parody of the Bush Administration. Gone was all the base motivation, the insight into human nature, and a believable origin of the crisis. Instead we got soap opera, pandering nonsense, and an explanation out of a Michael Moore movie.

Somehow they turned a potent story of pure anarchism into a theme of left-wing resentment.

All that being said, it was well acted, especially by Steven Rea, who caught the essence of Finch very well.

I finally finished watching The Sniper, a good film noir from 1952. It’s a good tense drama about a compulsive sex killer (who uses an M1 carbine, heh). One funny moment comes after the protagonist burns himself on a stove and goes to the emergency room. In addition to the memorable scenes of doctors smoking in hospitals, it has the line

E.R doc: A man’s got no business messing around with stoves, it’s strictly a woman’s business.